Nine Frugal Strategies for Tackling the Winter Blues

Time for a confession: I get hit hard by the winter blues. Sometime in November or early December, I hit an absolute wall when it comes to my personal energy levels. I start just feeling exhausted and all I want to do is sleep, sleep, sleep.

I noticed it from time to time earlier in life, but I began to notice it even stronger when I started working from home in 2008. In fact, the winter of 2008-2009 was absolutely miserable because I didn’t understand what was going on with me. By the end of the winter, I began to figure out what was going on and over subsequent winters I began to develop some strategies to deal with it.

What follows are nine strategies I use every single winter to minimize and largely avoid the winter blues. Only two of them involve any kind of purchase and one of them is a one-time purchase of an item I’ve been using for six years now and found invaluable.

Strategy #1: Go Outside

This is really the best strategy of all for avoiding the winter blues, at least for me. Simply go outside. Try to spend at least an hour each day doing something in the outdoors.

Most days, I go for a walk for about an hour. Yes, it involves bundling up when it’s cold out, but once I’m out there, it feels pretty good. I usually dress in a lot of layers and find that the bottom one ends up sweat-soaked by the time I get home.

Simply being outside in a bit of sunlight and getting a bunch of fresh air seems to make a huge difference for me.